


lyric-kissed

by elvenwinters



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Love, contemplating, platonic, pondering, romantic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 13:00:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29825301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elvenwinters/pseuds/elvenwinters
Summary: Two friends writing about love.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	lyric-kissed

“Um..” She tapped the pen against her lip, deep in thought. “I think...I’m in love with you.”

“Bland,” he replied. “That’s what everyone says.”

“Umm…” Murmuring, she crossed out a line. “Your love falls like petals against my skin.”

He fell silent for a moment, then spoke, “Cliché. Everyone speaks of flowers.”

“What about just…” She swallowed. She looked down at her feet, resting in black ballet flats. “I love you.”

The quiet rustling of the leaves above sounded like whispers. The trees were eavesdropping. There was a glimmer of something unidentifiable in his eyes, and she pretended not to see. 

“No,” he said. “That’s vile.”

* * *

“We could meet everywhere and nowhere but I still feel pulled to you,” he said. She wrinkled her nose. 

“Isn’t that a bit...?”

“Common?” 

“Perhaps. I like the first part of it.”

“We could meet everywhere and nowhere?”

“Yes. It reminds me of home, and of everywhere I haven’t yet been.” She pulled up a couple blades of grass and tossed them into the wind. 

“I see.” He scribbled in the margins of the pages. He looked up, and the sky pooled in his eyes. 

“We could meet everywhere and nowhere, but I still chase the cloud named you.”

She smiled, gently. “I like that.”

* * *

“I fight wars but you are my only victory.”

“That’s sweet. But I’m in the mood for tragedy.” He handed her a lollipop. 

“Tragedy, huh?” The shell of the candy was smooth, artificial sugar exploding on her tongue. “Tragedy…”

The storm rumbled overhead. The ground started writhing and gasping with tears, with unrelenting rain. She pulled her dark jacket around her tighter, and she glanced at him.

“I’m not.”

He started. “Not what?”

“I’m not in the mood for tragedy.” She grinned and faced the rain again. She stepped out into it from under the awning, the cool water dripping off her forehead and down her face. 

“Doesn’t the rain make you want to dance?”

His face settled into an expression of fond amusement. “No,” he said. “It doesn’t. It makes me want to crawl under an old shack made of rotting wood and mourn there in the wet ground.”

“Then you do that,” she teased, flicking rainwater from her clothes as she flung her arms outwards. “You do that, and I’ll be outside your sad little shack, collecting storm clouds in my mouth.”

“What would it taste like?” he asked, absentmindedly. She turned slowly, face facing the weeping sky, feet scraping over the sidewalk in front of the old store. She pulled the lollipop out of her mouth with a little _pop_ , letting the rain have a taste. 

“It’ll taste like blue raspberry.” She waved the stick of the lollipop around vaguely as she spoke, and he huffed in disbelief.

“That’s not a real flavor.”

“And neither is thunder and lightning, but you say the taste of it fills your throat, right?” 

“Touché,” he muttered, and he rolled his eyes as she smirked at him. She bounded up the cement stairs, barefoot, shoes lost somewhere in the grass, and he stumbled back, scowling. 

“Don’t you _dare_ get any of that sewer water on me—”

“What about ‘I return from the war to dance a waltz on your grave?’”

He looked at her incredulously. “You’ve been thinking about that?”

“Nope!” she said, shaking her head sharply, droplets flying from her rain-soaked hair. He frowned, and motioned at her to turn around. “Just occurred to me suddenly. That’s usually how it goes.”

“Yes, I suppose.” His voice was thoughtful as he gently squeezed the water from her hair. “That’s usually how it goes.”

“Ohh, that rhymes! Suppose, goes. Are you a poet, yet?”

“Shut up.”

* * *

She found him sitting behind a little puddle of blood, next to an empty glass. The first thing he did was reassure her.

“Oh, don’t worry, this isn’t all my blood, I just spilled some water, so I swear it just looks like it’s more than it is…”

She gently pressed a few fingers to the inside of his wrist, and a deep scowl etched itself into her face when wet blood covered her fingers. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, and he had the decency to look sheepish. 

“I don’t know. It’s just one of those days…”

“Don’t give me that ‘one of those days’ bull.”

Anger rumpled his face, then, and he grabbed her arm and turned it over, harshly. They both stared at the remnants of dark scars and rough edges, crisscrossing her pale skin. 

“You’re just as guilty as I am. Who do you think you are to demand an explanation?”

She didn’t have an answer. 

“Some days you just want to rip yourself out of your skin. So some days you do rip yourself out. It just happens.” Angry, angry words spilled from his mouth. “Under the rip there’s just nothing. There’s always this hope that you’ll find something more, maybe relief, maybe the last phrase to the sentence you’ve been writing. And you keep looking. And it’s never there.”

“Of course it’s never there,” she snapped, though her voice wavered. “Words don’t live under your skin.”

“They _do._ They rip me apart from the inside. Sometimes I look at a veiny leaf and I want to throw myself into the flames just to see what would burn up faster, the plant or me. Sometimes I look at the sky and I want to throw myself off of a cliff in order to feel the wind.” His voice quieted. “I want to break my bones open against cement. I want to inhale the night through my lungs and in turn, spit out the darkness inside, even if it takes all my blood with it.” 

She couldn’t look at him, but didn’t resist when he turned her face towards his. 

“And you know this. You’ve felt this too,” he said, staring down at the atlas of scars on their arms. Telling a different story with each one. “You’re a writer. We have no choice.”

“If it hurts this much to be a writer, maybe I don’t want to be one,” she replied hollowly. He laughed. 

“Come on, now.” He smiled, but it was sad, and his eyes were dim. “You can’t stop being a writer because you want to. Just like you can’t just not be human because you don’t want to be.”

“Yeah, I know.” She let her lips twitch upwards, a halfhearted smile in return. “We were made by the stars. It’d be a crime to get rid of the stardust inside.”

“Maybe we were really bad people in our past lives,” he sighed, falling onto his back. His breath left him in a whoosh. “Maybe this is a curse.”

“But it’s all too lovely to be a curse, don’t you think?” She looked up at the jagged hole in the ceiling, at the full moon, at the stars. The old, rotted floorboards dug into her hands, and the frame of the shack creaked. 

“Can’t live with it, can’t live without it. It’s a drug,” he said.

“It’s ruining our lives,” she agreed. “But if someone offered to take it away, I’d refuse. If they tried to take it away by force, I’d kill them.”

“That’s why you threw away your medication, wasn’t it?” His voice was barely above a murmur. He was dipping in and out of sleep.

She pretended she didn’t hear him. She drank in the moon, let it set her hair on white fire, and tried not to think about going home.


End file.
